AROUND THE WORLD: FIRST STOP, THE BANK

Stop work on financing clean energy, World Bank told
September 18, 2006 Reuters via Yahoo News
- The World Bank should stop exploring options for financing the development of clean energy because it does not have enough strength in the field, South Korea said on Monday.
- "The Bank's ideas would seem to be poor value to developing countries," Finance Minister Kwon O-kyu told the Development Committee of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
- British finance minister Gordon Brown first raised the idea of fresh cash for cleaner energy in April, calling for a seed fund of $20 billion for alternative energy.

- The World Bank has since prepared a draft of two proposed funds: the Clean Energy Financing Vehicle consists of low-interest loans; the Clean Energy Support Fund would be based on grants...
- Both ideas endorse low-carbon technologies and carbon emission reductions.
- Kwon said spending so much money on carbon credits would pose large but unquantifiable financial risks…Kwon was speaking for a group of Asia-Pacific nations including Australia…
- Japan chimed in… “…[A]s demand for energy is expected to increase and improved energy efficiency is becoming a challenge, it is imperative for the World Bank to focus on the development of existing technology for energy efficiency."
- Brown's drive for new cash follows a request by the Group of Eight in July 2005 to the World Bank to develop a new global framework for climate change that would remain effective long beyond the 2012 expiration of the Kyoto Protocol…